I have been writing non-stop about the Ukrainian War since Russia invaded the country, but I confess that I had to go to Europe and meet with politicians, diplomats and businessmen to understand what happened. I thought that Vladimir Putin had invaded Ukraine. I was wrong. Putin invaded Europe.
He shouldn’t have done this. This is perhaps the greatest act of madness in a European war since Adolf Hitler invaded Russia in 1941. I only fully understood this when I arrived on this side of the Atlantic. From a distance, it was easy to assume – and probably easy for Putin to assume – that Europe would one day accept a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, just as Europe complied when in 2014 he devoured the Crimean peninsula, a remote piece of Ukrainian territory. where it encountered little resistance and unleashed limited shockwaves. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
This invasion – with Russian soldiers indiscriminately bombing Ukrainian apartment buildings and hospitals, killing civilians, looting homes, raping women and creating Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II – is increasingly seen as a 21st century repeat of the aggression. of Hitler against the rest of Europe, which began in September 1939 with the attack on Poland. Add in Putin’s apparent threat to use nuclear weapons, warning that any country that interferes in his unprovoked war will face “unseen consequences”, and it’s all explained.
It explains why, practically overnight, the German government dispensed with nearly 80 years of aversion to conflict and keeping the smallest defense budget possible, and announced a huge increase in military spending and plans to send arms to Ukraine. It explains why, overnight, Sweden and Finland abandoned more than 70 years of neutrality and applied for NATO membership.
It explains why, overnight, Poland gave up playing with Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s populist, pro-Putin and anti-immigrant prime minister, and opened its borders to more than 2 million Ukrainians, while at the same time became a crucial land bridge for funneling NATO weapons into Ukraine.
It explains why, overnight, the European Union scrapped years of minimal economic sanctions against Russia and fired an economic sanctions missile into the heart of Putin’s economy.
In short, what I thought was just a Russian invasion of Ukraine turned into a European earthquake – “an awakening – boom! – and then everything changed”, as Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister, told me. “The previous status quo will not return. You are seeing a huge shift in Europe in response to Russia – not because of American pressure, but because the threat perception today is different: Putin is not just talking about Ukraine, he is talking about all of us.” and our way of freedom.”
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, I interviewed Anatoli Fedoruk, the mayor of Butcha, a city where Russia is accused of murdering dozens of civilians and leaving their bodies on the streets to rot, or piled in a mass grave, before Russian troops were expelled.
“We had 419 peaceful citizens murdered in various ways,” Fedoruk told me. “We had no military infrastructure in our city. People were helpless. Russian soldiers robbed, raped and drank… I’m really surprised that this is happening in the 21st century.”
If this was the “shock” phase of this war – and it continues – the “astonishment” phase is something I detected among the European authorities in Davos and Berlin. To be blunt, while the United States of America appears to be splitting apart, the United States of Europe – the 27 members of the European Union – surprised everyone, and especially themselves, by coming together to make a fist, along with several others. European nations and NATO, to prevent Putin’s invasion. You could almost feel the EU officials saying, “Gee, did we make this fist? Is this our fist?”
Since February, the EU has imposed five sanctions packages against Russia — sanctions that have not only seriously harmed Russia, but are also costly for EU countries in terms of lost business or higher raw material costs. A sixth package, agreed on Monday, will cut around 90% of Russia’s oil imports into the EU by the end of this year, while kicking Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, out of Swift. , the vital global banking messaging system.
Perhaps the most impressive thing is the amount of Ukrainian refugees that EU countries are willing to take in without much complaint. There is an awareness that Ukrainians are fighting to defend them so that EU countries can shelter their women, children and the elderly.
“They are getting the same health care, childhood subsidies and education as the Poles,” Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister of Poland, told me. “Why not? They’re working and paying taxes. The only thing they don’t have is the right to vote.”
Putin thought the EU would quickly splinter under his pressure, Morawiecki added, “but Putin was wrong. Europe is now much more united than before the Ukraine War.”
Looking at all this, Putin must be wondering, “Is this a fist I see coming from the EU to me? It can’t be! No, wait… it is! What’s going on here! I thought I had Germany in my pocket -” bought and paid for with my cheap gasoline. I never dreamed that they would support Ukraine in this way and see my invasion as an attack on them all.”
But that’s exactly what happened. Still, many in the EU are wondering how long they can keep that painful fist. It’s a legitimate question.
I hope the Ukrainians manage to hold their position long enough for more advanced Western weapons to come into the fight and for EU sanctions on Russia to really get in the way, so the Ukrainians will have real strength with Putin in any negotiated deal.
That said, though, I couldn’t help but notice another theme that ran through my conversations. It is the conviction that because this war is so Putin’s, and his barbarity of forces has been so criminal, as long as Putin remains in power it will be very difficult to trust Russia about anything related to Ukraine.
I haven’t heard anyone advocate regime change, but I haven’t heard anyone say that without it the West can regain some normalcy with Russia. All of which means that something very big with Putin has broken down here, and that will be a problem when we get to the negotiating table — as long as Putin leads Russia. But Putin is a problem for the Russian people to deal with, not for us.
